COLUMN: Baking the grade

Trying my best to be Buddy Valastro

With the semester in full swing, everything should just about be falling into place. We are at the point when many of us fully realize what is and is not working out for our individual classes. That being said … this is not how I expected things to be.

Every summer, I tear through the internet for ways to stay motivated and be organized during the semester. I come up with all of the beautiful scenarios in my head about using my planner every day, sticking to a set but flexible schedule and — the best of all — not procrastinating. And every new school year when it is time to put all my plans in action, things fall apart (rest easy Achebe).

To give a visual of my yearly downward spiral, let all of my beautiful plans be represented by the fantastic show Cake Boss, and my unfortunate reality as Hoarding: Buried Alive (H:BA).

Similar to Cake Boss, the customer, me, will come to Buddy with a seemingly impossible task of creating something fabulous and delicious. In my case, that will be having a fantastic academic semester with good study habits and little to no procrastination. During the summer, I will make Pinterest boards, create a system for my planner and design a study schedule so I could prepare myself to be successful. The result of my hardcore “cake” making skills would be perfect execution of the semester. The reality is I start the semester and get bombarded with information and future plans. I get so overwhelmed that everything starts spiraling out of control, similar to H:BA. In the show, usually the hoarders are aware of how they are living and know it isn’t right; they simply don’t know how to change it up and fix it. That pretty much sums up my biggest problem: procrastination. I know procrastinating is wrong but I can’t help myself, honest.

While I still really want my Cake Boss semester, I have to fix my “hoarding” problem first before I can even begin success in my academic endeavors.